SM Energy CFO: Uinta dynamics ‘hopefully loosening up’ for more M&A
The chief financial officer of SM Energy Co., Denver, said this week the company would like to grow its presence in Uinta basin and sees an “evolving” regulatory climate as helping its cause.
Speaking at the Bank of America Energy and Power Credit Conference in New York City, Wade Pursell said the executives feel good about the integration of the former XCL Resources LLC assets SM Energy acquired last year for about $2 billion (OGJ Online, June 28, 2024). The Uinta accounted for 19% of SM Energy's net production of nearly 17.8 MMboe during first-quarter 2025 and output there will grow this quarter and next as the operator lowers its rig count in the area to six from nine immediately post-acquisition.
Asked about SM’s potential to market its Utah production, Pursell said the company sent nearly 25% of its first-quarter production to the five refineries in the Salt Lake City area, above its target of 15-20%. That helped its margins there compared to shipping more of Uinta’s waxy crude via rail to infrastructure on the Gulf coast.
More broadly, Pursell told BofA analyst Gregg Brody it’s “always an objective” to grow, including in the Uinta, and later added that the state’s overall energy production picture is improving.
“It does look very different now than it did not too long ago […] So much of the oil is now being railed out of the state,” Pursell said. “The administration has changed […] It’s an unknown at this point. We’re not counting on the ability to get bigger there but I do think things are evolving and hopefully loosening up.”
Possibly adding to that loosening in the near future is a long-planned, 88-mile expansion of the Uinta Basin Railway that would connect producers to regional rail networks.
The US Supreme Court late last month unanimously endorsed a narrow interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act and put back into place a permit that will allow the project to proceed over the objections of several groups (OGJ Online, May 30, 2025).
The expansion plan still needs several approvals from Colorado officials.
Shares of SM Energy (Ticker: SM) were changing hands around $24.30 in midday trading June 5, the day after Pursell spoke at the BofA event. Over the past 6 months, however, they are down about 40%, which has cut the company’s market capitalization to about $2.8 billion.
Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.